Despite their extent and socio‐ecological importance, a comprehensive biogeographical
synthesis of drylands is lacking. Here we synthesize the biogeography of key organisms …

Models describing the biotic drivers that create and maintain biological diversity within
trophic levels have focused primarily on negative interactions (ie competition), leaving …

Aridity, which is increasing worldwide because of climate change, affects the structure and
functioning of dryland ecosystems. Whether aridification leads to gradual (versus abrupt) …

The environmental filtering hypothesis predicts that the abiotic environment selects species
with similar trait values within communities. Testing this hypothesis along multiple–and …

Aim More than ever, ecologists seek to understand how species are distributed and have
assembled into communities using the “filtering framework”. This framework is based on the …

Once seen as anomalous, facilitative interactions among plants and their importance for
community structure and functioning are now widely recognized. The growing body of …

The consequences of global change for the maintenance of species diversity will depend on
the sum of each species responses to the environment and on the interactions among them …

Despite their importance, how plant communities and soil microorganisms interact to
determine the capacity of ecosystems to provide multiple functions simultaneously …

Understanding how ecosystem functioning is impacted by global change drivers is a central
topic in ecology and conservation science. We need to assess not only how environmental …

We used a functional trait‐based approach to assess the impacts of aridity and shrub
encroachment on the functional structure of Mediterranean dryland communities (functional …